Posted
by
samzenpuson Thursday May 05, 2011 @11:04AM
from the fresh-bottles-from-today's-catch dept.

In an attempt to reduce pressure on disappearing fish stocks, the EU's fisheries chief has proposed paying fisherman to catch floating plastic instead of fish. In a trial run, select Mediterranean fishermen will be given nets for scooping up the trash and will be paid for the amount of plastic that gets recycled. From the article: "...in future the scheme could turn into a self-sustaining profitable enterprise, as fleets cash in on the increasing value of recycled plastics. Cleaning up the rubbish will also improve the prospects for fish, seabirds and other marine species, which frequently choke or suffer internal damage from ingesting small pieces of non-biodegradable packaging." I look forward to the day that landfill mining becomes profitable.

That's what I was thinking. This actually places incentives to dump trash into the ocean, rewarding the behavior that caused the problem they are trying to clean up. I can see that when the economy turns bad, people will be encouraging everyone to dump more plastic to "create" jobs.